a perfect soldier
by brooklynkings
Summary: It used to bother Bucky, that the friend he considered a brother didn't see him the same way. Now he couldn't care less how Steve loves him, as long as it means that Steve loves him most. (part 2 of "the day after forever" series)
1. PRELUDE: the future

**Content warnings:** PTSD, depression, torture, suicidal thoughts, internalized homophobia, referenced suicide, antisemitism, minor Bucky Barnes/OFC

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 **a perfect soldier**

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"Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believe in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait."

\- Tim O'Brien, _The Things They Carried_ -

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 **PRELUDE: the future**

 _This is the truest lie he'll ever tell: there's always time to start over._

 **{1945 - 2014}**

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There are letters in Sergeant Barnes's desk, locked out of sight. No one finds them until after the _Valkyrie_ falls, taking Steve into the northern Atlantic with her. When Peggy uncovers the letters, she almost cries, because no one lines up notes in this way unless they never intend to come home. She personally delivers each one to the Howling Commandos and the sergeant's family.

Mrs. Barnes takes the letter with steady hands, but her smile trembles when she says, "He always was so much like his father. George was a soldier too, you know."

The letter to Steve she can't bear to open, and besides, it isn't hers to read anyway.

So Peggy tucks it away in a folder, right behind the 1A stamp that made a great man into a hero. Boxes it up and hides it away on an obscure, dusty shelf in the basement. If anyone ever disturbs that file, it won't be for a long, long time.

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Phil Coulson has been an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. for exactly two weeks when he asks Director Fury for permission to search the old S.S.R. archives.

"Why?" Fury asks. "That shit's a mess. Hasn't been organized in fifty years, and half of it's water damaged."

"Water damaged?"

Fury says, "Don't ask," in a tone that makes Phil stand up straighter.

"Um, yes, sir."

Fury looks at him expectantly, then says, voice slow and careful, like he's speaking to a particularly stupid child, "You didn't answer my question, agent. What are you planning to look for in the archives?"

It takes all of Phil's willpower not to look away when he says, "I'm a fan of Captain America, sir. I was hoping to find his original S.S.R. file."

"A fan." Fury's frown is so disdainful that Phil blushes, but he refuses to show any shame. So what if he owns Cap trading cards? There's nobody better to look up to than Steve Rogers.

"I understand if it wouldn't be appropriate to give me clearance, sir." Phil shrugs, smiles, and says, "I just thought I'd ask."

Fury gives him a considering look. "Go ahead, but if you find that file, bring it straight to me. It might be useful to have."

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Two years after Nick gives Coulson permission to search the archives, he shows up at the top floor of the Triskelion carrying a battered old box that smells like mildew.

"What the hell is that, and what is it doing in my office?"

Coulson grins, wider and happier than any self-respecting agent ought to smile in front of their director, and says, "I found it, sir. Captain Rogers's file."

Nick wishes he still had two good eyes so he could glare at Coulson with both of them. "You've been looking for that file for two years."

"Yes, sir," Coulson says brightly. "In my defense, the archives are huge and in as poor condition as you said they would be."

Nick sighs, waves at the box, and asks, "Well did you at least find anything good in there?"

"I did, sir. I never would've guessed it, but apparently Captain Rogers was rejected by the Army six times from '41 to '43, and looking at the full list of his ailments, I can see why. Did you know that he was color blind before the serum? That's one you don't learn in history class—"

Nick stands up, walks around his desk, and takes the file out of Coulson's hands. "That'll be all, agent."

Coulson's shoulders square, and in a moment he's back to the calm professionalism that Nick has learned to expect from him. "There's one other thing, sir. A letter, addressed to Captain Rogers. It's still sealed, so I imagine that whoever put it there felt that it should be saved for the captain's eyes alone."

Nick dismisses Coulson, takes the letter from its hiding place, and opens it.

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"Read this."

Natasha looks up at Nick, trying to evaluate his expression, but all she sees is the same implacable, harried confidence that defined his directorship of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Then she reads the name on the front of the yellowed envelope and asks, "What is it?"

"A letter to Cap from Sergeant Barnes, dated January 20, 1945." Nick's smile is grim. "A suicide note."

Not much surprises Natasha, but this does. Still, she makes sure not to show it. "And you're giving it to me. Why?"

Nick nods at the letter, then says, "I want you to decide whether or not Cap should have it. Now that the truth about the Winter Soldier is out, there are things he'll want to know. If you think he can handle it."

Natasha pulls the letter out of its tender, time-worn envelope, opens it and reads the whole thing in less than a minute. It takes longer, much longer, before she says, "Well. That's not what I was expecting."

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The day after he's released from the hospital, Natasha gives Steve a faded file folder, ragged around the edges, and says, "There's something you need to see."

Inside his S.S.R. file, Steve finds a letter with his name on it, written in Bucky's juvenile scrawl. Forever frozen in a seventh grader's awkward hand, thanks to the education he didn't get to finish.

It starts with _You did everything you could_ and ends with _I've always loved you, same as you loved me_. Steve reads the letter over and over, too starved to care that he's swallowing lies.

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	2. FUGUE: where are we going?

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 **FUGUE: where are we going?**

 _Maybe he can learn to love back if he just tries—and maybe, if he wishes for it hard enough, the sun will never set and the war will end._

 **{1943}**

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It's Bucky's last night in Brooklyn, and he spends it at the Stark Expo, looking to a future that he isn't sure he's going to see.

An hour ago, he picked Steve up out of the dirt, protected him from a new bully, same as he's done every other day all his life. It might be exhausting, cleaning up Steve's messes, if he didn't love him so damn much. Because it is love, what he feels—if not the same sort of love that Steve harbors for him.

He asked, "Where are we going?" and all Bucky wanted to say back was, " _We_ aren't going anywhere."

They're about to be separated, stuck on opposite sides of the ocean, and it isn't fair. If Steve was as strong in body as he is in heart, he'd make the best kind of soldier. But Bucky, he'll only do what he has to, kill to make it home, back to his mother and his sisters and Steve. Steve, who might as well be a little brother to him, always in need of rescue, but quick to rescue Bucky back in all the ways that he can.

He wants to be honest with Steve, but "the future" is a much easier answer to give.

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	3. FIRST MOVEMENT: good becomes great

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 **FIRST MOVEMENT: good becomes great; bad becomes worse**

 _No one could build a soldier from a man. But he was beaten, broken, then burnt to the ground, and a soldier crawled out of the ashes._

 **{1943}**

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Every time he falls asleep, Bucky dreams of that goddamned table. How the straps bit into his skin, sharp and stifling. The pinprick of needles, piercing tender flesh, flooding his veins with fire. For weeks, Zola left him to piss his pants and sob like a child, repeating his service number over and over, because giving up anything else would be treason.

Before Kreischberg, Bucky was a proud man, but Hydra's methods broke him. Beatings and electric shocks and syringes full of burning blue drugs left no room for anything besides fear.

Now he lies awake, running his fingers over the cold metal of his dog tags. Every indention is so familiar that he could read it with his eyes closed.

 _Barnes, James B._ _32557038\. T43-44. O. H._

H for Hebrew. The only reason he was selected for Hydra's special experiments.

 _I'll take this one_ , Zola said, when he looked at Bucky's dog tags. _Jews make the best subjects._

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When Agent Carter strolls into a pub full of drinking soldiers like she owns the place, Bucky does his best to distract her from Steve. It's an ugly way to act, petty and jealous, but he doesn't need any reminders that he's a ruined, faded version of the man he used to be. And there's nothing quite like a beautiful dame's disinterest to rub salt in that wound.

Steve and Carter look at each other like they're the only man and woman on earth, as if the rest of the world has fallen away, and Bucky hates it.

After she leaves, he laughs. "I'm invisible. I'm turning into you," Bucky says. "This is a horrible dream."

Not so long ago, Bucky was the only one who knew what Steve was worth, who saw his courage and kindness before his frail body. Now that the entire U.S. Army is kissing Captain America's ass, he doesn't want his best friend to forget who he loved first.

Bucky drinks three whiskeys. They must be weaker than they taste, because he feels dispiritingly sober when he and Steve head back toward base. It's cold outside, much colder than November in Brooklyn, and something about the city at night seems wrong. The roads are too dark, the buildings too old, and there's a sense of permanency that New York lacks. Like these cobblestone streets have survived worse than German bombs, and they'll survive this too. It should be reassuring, maybe, but London is too far from American soil for Bucky to find the idea very comforting.

"Are you sure you want to follow me?" Steve asks.

Bucky slings an arm around his broad shoulders, and tries to shake off the unsettling sensation that Steve is taller and stronger than him. He isn't sure that he'll ever get used to it.

"If I don't stick around, who's gonna keep you from doing something stupid?"

Steve looks like a stranger these days, but at least the way he smiles at Bucky is the same: soft, fond, and a little bit smitten.

 _He still wants me._ It used to bother Bucky, that the friend he considered a brother didn't see him the same way. He's never thought any less of Steve for being a queer—half-a-queer?—but he also wasn't quite comfortable with being the object of his affection.

Now Bucky couldn't care less _how_ Steve loves him, as long as it means that Steve loves him _most_.

"Like you've ever been able to stop me," Steve says.

"Yeah right." Bucky pulls him closer, and he can't quite ignore how odd it feels that he has to reach _up_ to ruffle Steve's hair. "I just let you think you call the shots, punk."

"You will address me as 'captain' or 'sir,'" Steve says, laughing.

Bucky laughs too. "You can kiss my ass. Captain."

It feels so good to hold Steve close, bickering and name-calling like they're boys again, and Bucky wants to hang onto this moment forever.

Steve ducks out of his embrace, voice serious when he says, "You've got more right than anybody to make Hydra pay, but if you choose to go home, I would never blame you. You know that, right?"

Bucky hurries ahead, leaving Steve to trail along in his wake. This, at least, is familiar.

Colonel Phillips said he could be honorably discharged, and God knows Bucky wants to take him up on that offer. But if he's learned anything since he left America, it's that home isn't New York so much as it is whichever place Steve Rogers happens to be—and Steve will stay here until the war is won.

"I've already told you twice: I'm not going back. Not yet," Bucky says. "I'm starting to think you ain't listening."

"All right, Buck. I hear you."

Steve clasps his shoulder, and his grip is warm, grounding. Strong and protective in a way that Bucky isn't used to, and he finds himself wanting to lean into it. To hold fast to Steve until this war is over. Until they can go back to Brooklyn, together.

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Last year, after Bucky opened the letter that changed his life, he hid the Army's summons under his mattress and pretended it never existed. Spun a story to his family about enlisting because it was the right thing to do. It doesn't matter that it _is_ the right thing, that he's serving regardless of the cause; a lie is a lie. He let Steve collect a half-dozen 4F stamps without ever coming clean. And when the time came to ship out, Bucky wore his neat uniform with all the arrogance of a man who had chosen his own fate.

It was bullshit, and there's no way to keep that secret anymore. Bucky was rattling off his service number the night Steve rescued him from the Kreischberg factory, and he knows as well as any other captain that a "3" designates a drafted soldier.

The Steve he grew up with would have said something about it by now, but he's changed, they've both changed, and now they skirt around the truth.

(The lies that Bucky has told today, in no particular order: he volunteered for the Army, and he's happy to serve his country; no, he isn't homesick; yes, he thinks British dames are much prettier than American girls; and he's fine, just fine, thank you.)

Steve knows he's a liar, knows what a coward he is. How could he not, after finding him strapped down to that table like a fucking animal? After smelling his uniform, rank with sweat and piss?

Bucky couldn't stand it if that's all Steve ever saw of him as a soldier. Some helpless, broken thing in need of rescue. The way that, in his most shameful moments, Bucky sometimes looked at him.

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Steve tells Colonel Phillips that Bucky is going to be his second-in-command, and within a day he has a visitor: Agent Carter. She's dressed in her spotless uniform, dark curls styled to perfection, beautiful lips stained red.

Bucky nods. "Ma'am."

She's too smart to miss the mockery in his voice, but instead of reprimanding him, she says, "Might I have a word, Sergeant?"

Bucky opens his door wider. "You can have as many words as you like, Agent Carter."

Actual officers keep quarters on base, but the S.S.R. has stowed away half-relevant grunts like Bucky in a ramshackle hotel. It's still nicer than anywhere he ever lived in Brooklyn, even though his room is tiny, threadbare, and already wrecked.

Carter steps over an empty liquor bottle, looking vaguely unimpressed. If Bucky has ever met a woman who could exude disdain like Peggy Carter, he can't recall it.

"Looks like you had quite a night," she says mildly.

"Not really." Bucky drank half a gallon of whiskey, just to see if he could still get drunk, but he never felt a drop of it. One more disappointment he can thank Zola's serum for. He can't sleep without nightmares, can't drink to escape, can't even stand to be touched by anyone besides Steve.

He doesn't invite Carter to sit down, because the sooner she leaves him alone, the happier he'll be.

"I'll get right to the point," she says. "Colonel Phillips told me that you refused an honorable discharge, and you're joining Captain Rogers's team."

Bucky puts his hands in his pockets. "And?"

Carter shrugs. Somehow she manages to make even that casual gesture look rigid. "And it surprised me. You were captured, imprisoned, and tortured. After an ordeal like that, most men would jump at the chance to go home."

"If you're here to talk me out of it, you're wasting your time," Bucky says. "Steve already tried."

He expects her to take issue with such blatant disrespect, but Carter only laughs. She's gorgeous even when she scowls, but her smile is breathtaking. No wonder she has Steve wrapped around her little finger.

Steve and Peggy's interest in each other should be a burden lifted, but Bucky can't quite find the same relief in it that he once would have.

"You misunderstand me," Carter says. "I don't intend to discourage you. I think your choice is very brave, and frankly, I'm thankful that Steve will have someone like you looking out for him."

"Someone like me?" Bucky asks. He thinks of Zola's table, and the draft notice he stuffed under his mattress. "How do you have any idea what I'm like? We barely know each other."

"You didn't sign up for this fight, and you're still following your friend into hell," Carter says. Her dark eyes are sharp and shrewd, much too keen for Bucky's liking. "That tells me everything I need to know."

He can't figure out how to answer that, and he's still struggling for the right words when she says, "I only wanted to wish you well. Good day, Sergeant Barnes."

Bucky has been trying his damnedest to hate Agent Carter, but she's making it very hard.

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Captain America's team leaves for Germany the day after tomorrow, and Bucky can't sleep. In forty-eight hours, he'll be back in the thick of this war, seeking out bases like the one where he was held. He could die, or worse, end up captured again. Trapped and restrained, used like a lab rat to further Hydra's cause.

By three o'clock in the morning, Bucky gives up on getting any rest, so he changes into his wrinkled uniform and walks to S.S.R. headquarters.

At the gate, a middle-aged sergeant frowns at him and says, "It's 0300 hours. What business do you have here?"

Bucky stands up straighter. "I want to see Captain Rogers."

"And I want to have dinner with my wife in Kansas," says the sergeant. "We don't always get what we want. Go back to your quarters."

Bucky doesn't have the patience for this shit. Not tonight. "Look, I need to talk strategy with Captain America. So unless you'd like to have two hundred pounds of pissed off supersoldier kicking your ass, maybe just let me through. All right, pal?"

The sergeant mutters something about reporting him to Colonel Phillips, but he gets out of Bucky's way just the same.

Most of Headquarters is underground, and he has to go down four flights of stairs before he reaches the residential wing that houses Steve's room. There are a half-dozen American N.C.O.s on guard throughout the building, and even more low-ranking British officers, but none of them gives him any trouble.

Steve neglected to lock his door, so Bucky lets himself inside.

He doesn't even have time to say hello before he's pinned against the wall. The darkness runs too deep to see through, but Bucky knows what the clasp of Steve's hands feels like on his shoulders, even if his strength is foreign.

"Hey! It's just me."

Steve's grip falters, then falls away. "Bucky?"

He snorts. "Who else would be bothering you at three in the morning?"

 _Probably Agent Carter._ A year ago, he would've been happy for Steve to find a girl, perhaps even relieved. But Bucky only feels resentful, and he doesn't want to examine his own bitterness too closely.

There's the click of a lamp switch, and dull, orange light fills the room.

He's seen Steve plenty of times since Kreischberg, but not like this, shirtless and sleep-tousled. He crosses his arms over his bare chest, and somehow, with the power of that strong body on display, Bucky can finally spot Captain America's weaknesses. There's shame written along the lines of his hunched shoulders and bowed head, as familiar as the green in his blue eyes. Of all the things that could have stayed the same, he wishes it hadn't been Steve's insecurities.

He doesn't look up when he asks, "What are you doing here, Bucky?"

"I can't sleep." That isn't much of an answer, but it's the only one he has to give.

Steve rummages through his dresser, then turns away to pull a white t-shirt over his head.

"Why're you so bashful?" Bucky asks. "It's nothing I didn't see back in Brooklyn."

Steve gives him a wary, injured look, like he can't figure out whether or not he's being made fun of. "Don't act like I haven't changed," he whispers. "We both know that's not true."

"You're so damn dramatic." Bucky strides forward and puts his hand on Steve's chest. "This body might be Army-issued, but it's still yours. Don't ever forget that."

The heart beneath his palm beats slowly, steadily; nothing like the fragile, irregular rhythm that Steve lived with for twenty-five years. As difficult as his transformation is for Bucky to accept, he understands that Abraham Erskine saved Steve from an early, overlooked grave, and he's never been more thankful for anything.

"Are you all right, Buck?"

 _Don't do that_ , he wants to say. _Don't treat me like I need help._

He's already useless. Too twisted by Hydra's experiments and too broken by this war to be any kind of good man. Worse, Bucky has built his life around looking out for Steve, and there's no one who needs protection less than Captain America.

"I'm fine," he says.

Steve's chest is fever-hot beneath his hand, and for a moment Bucky wishes that he'd wrap those solid arms around him. It would feel so safe, he thinks. Secure, like nothing else has since Zola's table.

All he has to do is say something. Steve's desire is no secret. Everything he wants shows plainly on his face, and if Bucky gives in, gives up—if he asks to be touched—he's sure that Steve would make it good for him.

He stumbles backward, turns away. The room seems too small, and his stomach drops, heavy and sickened. He's always been greedy, thoughtless, but Bucky has never let selfishness drive him so low before. What kind of man would exploit his best friend's love just to steal a little comfort for himself?

"I've gotta go, gotta sleep if I can," Bucky says. "Sorry I bothered you, Captain. Won't happen again."

He's already out the door before Steve can say more than his name.

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MI6 operatives confirm that there's a Hydra base in western Poland, right along the German border, nested in the midst of several Nazi camps.

Bucky knows what happens at those camps. He's known since _The New York Times_ printed an article, buried on page 7, about the annihilation of European Jews.

And sometimes, when Zola felt talkative, he'd tell Bucky about Buchenwald, the camp where he created equipment to facilitate medical experiments. Schmidt had been impressed with his work and recruited him within a year. But before he'd joined Hydra, Zola had built chambers to freeze and thaw prisoners, testing the human body's endurance in extreme cold.

 _Gypsies and Jews were the most compliant subjects_. _Are you going to be compliant, Sergeant Barnes?_

Bucky had resisted at first, but Zola pumped him full of drugs, some to transform him into a better soldier, some to keep him placid and confused. After enough needles, and beatings, and stories about dead, docile Jews, the fight had gone out of him. No one rescued the victims at Buchenwald, and no one would rescue him either.

Except, Steve did. Steve appeared, as brave and impossible as a prince right out of a fairy tale, to save him.

The night before they set out for Poland, Steve says, "You know, if you want new dog tags, they wouldn't be hard to get."

Tags without an _H_ on them, he means. Tags that don't paint a target on his back in Nazi territory.

It's a little late for that, though, so Bucky shakes his head. "No. I'm keeping these."

Maybe he's just being stubborn, but can't bear to wear any tags besides the ones that saw him through Kreischberg. He thinks of his father, who wasn't proud of much. Yet he'd been proud to be Jewish, and it's taken a long time for Bucky to be proud too. He isn't about to let Hydra take that pride from him on top of everything else.

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Winter in Poland is far crueler than winter in Brooklyn, and the team complains about it constantly. Falsworth, Gabe, Morita, Dernier, Dum Dum: they all shiver and bitch, blue-lipped, about the cold. Just so he doesn't stand out, Bucky cusses Polish weather in his most colorful language, but the truth is, he barely feels it.

It's not much of a surprise. He's stronger, faster, hardier than he's ever been. Bucky's excellent aim made him a sniper, but he's different now. No matter how tricky the target is, he never misses. No matter how little sleep he gets, his body rarely tires. Bucky is hungry all the time, but if he eats as voraciously as he wants to, then someone might notice that he isn't quite right.

He's almost like Steve. Except that Erskine's formula amplified the goodness in Steve, and whatever Zola did unearthed the bad in Bucky, brought it to the surface and made it worse.

On the third day of the mission, as they're scouting the terrain around a Hydra base, Bucky spots a black-clad agent. He's perched in a tree, as unobtrusive and well-balanced as a sparrow, maybe a thousand yards away. Before Kreischberg, Bucky would never have made a shot like this, but now he can. Now he will. He aims, breathes, and pulls the trigger. The agent falls, dead before Bucky even notices the rifle's recoil against his shoulder.

Later, their team makes camp in an abandoned school. Everything's been burned, the roof is falling in, and vines crawl up the blackened bricks, strangling the walls that hold up this forgotten house of learning. Bucky can see stars through a hole in the ceiling, bright points against the black of night. The sun should be setting on New York right now, and he wonders if his mother could be looking at the sky too. Doing the same thing Bucky's doing, half a world away. It's an oddly comforting thought.

He grips his dog tags and runs his fingers over the familiar grooves of his service number. _32557038._ That's his, as much as anything can be these days.

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End file.
